Having grown up on a flower farm, I am use to walking around and picking a little of this and a little of that to bring into the house. Our ever growing organic farm here at Murphy & Klein Studio is starting to feel the same way. Today while looking at my frilly white narcissus and hellebores, I was thinking how I wished I could make a very loose natural bridal bouquet. I went looking for a few different flowers to put together. I found that a lot of my large ferns were just coming up and were at the “fiddle head” stage, which is very early in the season for this. One of my many types of viburnum plants has buds that resemble red berries and I like it best at this stage, but rarely get to use it. My bridal wreath bush has popped open and is at the perfect stage to use before it starts to drop it’s little white centers, but we haven’t any early April weddings.

I would like to use a lot of our flowers for our Open Studio tour and for the bridal food tasting at Hollyhedge Estates in New Hope, Pa. on April 18th 2010. I was just talking to Fred at Max Hanson Catering and told him that we could help decorate the food tables for an art opening called Icons of Costume at the Michener Art Museum in Doylestown Pa. Although we have to buy most of our flowers, it’s so nice to walk outside and pick them fresh. We’ve planted our sweet peas and soon to plant the cosmos and sun flowers. So much to do, and it feels so good doing it.

It is perfect weather for cleaning out the gardens and trimming back the bushes. Here at Murphy & Klein Floral Studio, we have worked hard to increase our variety of blooming bushes and plants in our organically maintained gardens. We love seeing our perennials sprouting. All of our peony plants are sending up their little red missiles, luckily we could still rake the dead leaves away without breaking them. Last year we removed some shade trees and our lilacs have thanked us with many big buds.

We spent many hours’ dead heading all of the hydrangea bushes; some of them are looking more like trees than bushes. Our green viburnum bushes are loaded with buds, it’s fabulous how we get a bigger harvest each year. I’m trying to save the hellabores for our open studio tour, but they are in full bloom, however they do last a long time in the garden. Every year our vitex trees look like they didn’t make it through the winter, and we have almost cut them down in past years, but now we know that they are the last to show any signs of sprouting.

Last year Jerry Fritz from Linden Hill Gardens planted a garden for us with new varieties of blooming bushes. We’re excited to use the mock orange with the lime green foliage. We’re crazy about our deutzia plants and last year planted ten more with a few new varieties. We’ll soon be able to use these flowers with the May weddings coming up.

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